Especially psilocybin. "Hero" or "ego-death" doses are fascinating. Filters/barriers break down. Each room in my house had a special vibration/energy based on how I spent my time there. Artwork had deep meanings not previously noticed. Projected families and friends onto chairs in my empty dining room and had conversations with them (with cussing & sobbing). Started to think about my ancestors and had "past life" schizophrenic experiences based on memories and impressions of history. Felt powerful daemonic energy, radiating from body out of my hands, and felt amazed by the incredible ability humans have to create & destroy.

THC/cannabis is too much of a recreational drug... though it's useful for taking the edge off at the end of a psilocybin trip.

Not to take anything away from your experience, but I've noticed that in reading reports from various people taking larger trips, I get this impression that a big part of the experience is indistinguishable from schizophrenia. What I mean is nobody can properly define their terms in any commonly shared way, people believe and see things they can't possibly share in a relatable way. Not everything of course, but your feeling of your hands strikes me as something you certainly felt, but likely wasn't anything more than an emotional experience that your brain and consciousness imagined, rather than deduced from logic. But since it felt so real, it felt so 'true' but likely wasn't. I could be wrong though.

That’s the thing with your brain: Everything is kinda like that! All the time.

Most of your brain literally cannot distinguish between fantasy, dream, stories, and actual experiences.

And the parts that do, will never be able to tell if it’s all just made up.

Philosophically, there is no ”reality“ but that what you perceive. Which, due to relativity, is, well, highly relative too. There is no absolute reality either. You can literally have conflicting facts about even simple things, that both are true, and scientifically verifiably so. (Like ”Who shot first?“. Or ”What particle came first?“.)

So be very wary whenever you are confident about such things. Because that is only possible with enough convenient ignorance.

Let's not confuse what's in our heads and what's outside of them.

Philosophy doesn't get us out of the gravity well, cure diseases, build computers, or feed the hungry. However, it does motivate people to prioritize those things.

>> Let's not confuse what's in our heads and what's outside of them.

Well, everything that is at the boundary of our knowledge is also on the boundary between our heads and outside of them.

Let's say you think your partner loves you. How well do you know that? Do you think you know them well? What's the difference between them realising that they should move on in life later on and having planned it all along (getting rid of you in a few years)?

Do you believe in marriage? Is it something enforced upon us by the culture or is it emergent from each one of us individually? What if I only speak about you yourself? Is happy marriage a 5, 10, 20 year long thing? If your partner dies, how long do you wait before your marry someone else?

I would even go as far as saying that "curing diseases, building computers and feeding the hungry" is something that people with a certain slave mentality tend to think about. They need a rational purpose to live because otherwise they would need to admit they are not rational players - but in the end it's them you lose in the game of life by blaming everybody else for being so _irrational_.

What?

> Let's not confuse what's in our heads and what's outside of them.

You can try not to, but ultimately you will fail because your brain works against you.

Schizophrenia isn't some binary thing one either has or doesn't, it's much more of a scale.

A base level of it is even required for our punny brains to rationalize not just all kinds of basic sensory inputs [0], but tying all kind of abstract human-created constructs together in such a way that it sill ends up making "objective" sense to the individual.

[0] https://www.livescience.com/21275-color-red-blue-scientists....

What do you mean ”outside“?

How can you tell there actually is an outside? (And if you can never tell, why would it matter?)

You're venturing into solipsism and that's a well trod dead end. There's certainly an objective world out there. That's where all the fun stuff happens, you know, the stuff with other people, consensus reality.

According to Wikipedia's definition , psychosis is an abnormal condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not. Speaking as someone who has taken a very large dose of LSD, the boundary between alerted consciousness(or consciousness at all) and psychosis is very blurry. All of human experience is merely an interpretation of our stimuli, and one person's perception of reality is likely to be quite different from other people.

A key difference between LSD-indused psychosis and schizophrenia is timespan. For most people, the psychosis fades and they just become normal people again. (some people do trigger schizophrenia that persists after their trips, though it's rare)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis?wprov=sfla1

Personally I have always had amplified psychedelic experiences when pairing them with cannabis and since using psychedelics, I've been much more sensitive to thc. It's weird that people have so many different experiences from those chemicals.

For this reason, I am very selective about using THC. Unless I've also had some alcohol, it'll typically induce anxiety for me. Kudos to those who can enjoy it though.

I had the same experience during my high school and college years. THC consumption (with alcohol or without) consistently induced anxiety (sometimes so much as to induce mini panic-attacks).

Fast-forward five or so years, and I gave it another shot out of curiosity. Interestingly enough, my experience was starkly different. I guess you could say I experienced the traditional side-effects that I had missed my first time around. What's most notable is the subtle after-glow I would feel days after using THC.

I have since been using THC while practicing mindfulness and the benefits have been enumerable! It's quite interesting what role age, set, setting, etc. can have during these experiences.

If you're enjoying it with mindfulness it might also be good with cardio. A tiny bit before 45 minutes on a bike along with some music really makes the time fly.

I do this myself. Cycling is much more enjoyable this way. Even better with edibles and a long distance ride.

Very much so! The combination with an endorphin rush is pretty nice afterwards too.

Kinda sounds to me you used sativa at first, then switched to indica and that's pretty much exactly how that usually works. They have significantly different "highs" and sativa can feel antsy and uncomfortable for already anxious people.

Not necessarily: I always had anxiety issues with cannabis until I tried a pure sativa strain. The problem is that indica gives we weird bodily sensations which trigger my anxiety, whereas sativa only affects my mind.

I think the important thing is that people can experiment in a controlled way. It wasn't until cannabis became legal that I could compare strains and figure out what exactly was causing my anxiety.

An alternative explanation is "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

Certainly holds true for me: the experience, it turns out, depends more on where I am in that stage of life than the substance in question. Cannabis is radically different for me now (at 30-something and after several intense psychedelic experiences) than at 19 or 20 when I first tried it.

And...I'm not assuming you're a man :)

Anecdotally, I find it fascinating that many people find cannabis induces anxiety, while many others use cannabis as a treatment or coping mechanism for anxiety. I'm sure the strain, strength, and exact blend of cannabinoids are relevant factors (and perhaps a bit of placebo/psychosoma based on past experiences), but I suspect if one controlled for all those variables, we'd still see wildly different effects w/r/t anxiety, based on individual brain differences alone.

There are definitely a lot of variables to consider. Method of consumption - I prefer not to smoke things, so I would use edibles.

Strain, strength, psychosoma, as you mention. Psychosoma can be affected by location, time of day (light out or dark out), the company you are in, legality, or potential work-related ramifications, etc.

I _do not recommend_ this at all, but if you want to have an anxious episode, consuming a 10MG THC edible on an empty stomach, while alone, will likely do it. You may find yourself repeatedly Googling "Am I going to die?!", and then forgetting the answer 10 seconds later, for about 90 minutes.

That said, there have been times where I've enjoyed it. Being in a familiar environment, with people I trust, having eaten food, and maybe a drink or two, tends to nullify the anxiety and allow for a relaxing experience. I find similar benefits from meditation though, so I have little reason to use THC these days.

i find it hard to believe that 10mg would do that to me, but that's mostly because I've taken a ~50mg edible (about 1/3 of a 150mg brownie) on an empty stomach and didn't particularly feel super anxious. i certainly was effected, but all in all i ended up finishing that whole brownie and just felt really nice. but i had a fairly strong tolerance at the time and i am a fairly overweight person with a slow metabolism so those things probably contributed. ill have to try again at some point in the future when I'm in better shape and have little-to-no tolerance because that genuinely sounds like a fun time to me.

kinda weird but i find experiencing anxiogenic effects and then calming my mind and letting them go to be an extremely enjoyable experience with mind altering substances. huge part of why i used to abuse diphenhydramine regularly, other than seeing my friends the shadow people!

I consistently have a similar response to the parent. I used to consume a lot in college, but since slowed down to very infrequent usage, primarily because I found I started having anxiety when using it. It started with a vague sort of "is that the cops" kind of thing, but quickly evolved into panic about my health, and overpowering existential dread.

I can still enjoy a very small dose, preferably in the company of others, like at a party or something.

You might find the website leafly.com interesting. I found it while developing a website for a company. They list different types of cannabis & their effects based on what it contains.

I always had the feeling it would raise my heart rate, which usually leads to anxiety for me.

But I have a really low heart rate. It's around 30 when I wake up in the morning and usually 50-60 during the day. So I guess pretty much everything could raise my heart rate, haha.

There was some research done on psychedelic hallucinations which revealed that there is actually less sensory input and that so filters are not disabled - they just have less work as there is less input.

With less input the brain hallucinates to fill in the gaps. It may feel like the doors are being opened to allow the outside in but hallucinogens close the outside off. Your heightened perception of external things when on psychedelics are hallucinations occurring in your brain and not some objective information being transmitted from outside

What socks? :D

Try heart beat, breathing, blood flowing through you, your intestines working, air going through hairs and across your snin, saliva being squeezed out of your mouth's glands, your teeth and tongue touching everything in there, any speck of dust under your finger and toe nails, … did I miss anything?

As somebody who is way more aware of these things way too often: Not fun!

i have horrible adhd (diagnosed, both as a child and as an adult) and i think i already don't have very many filters... And I liked the small amount of shrooms i've had... but I do worry if i try it more then i'll end up without any filters!